


This Isn't the Angel I Wanted

by JustADragon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous Aziraphale and Crowley Relationship (Good Omens), Crowley Has Self-Esteem Issues (Good Omens), Flashback to the Seventh Doctor, Gen, I May Add Artwork Later, M/M, Pre-Antichrist, Pre-Timelord Victorious, Ten Being Very Tactile, as usual, but no promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28483407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustADragon/pseuds/JustADragon
Summary: Crowley returns to his flat after traveling to America for a temptation, only to encounter an uninvited guest. Aziraphale flings himself headfirst into dealing with the problem, who in turn ropes a certain Time Lord into helping out.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	This Isn't the Angel I Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> What happens when a casual Whovian/diehard Good Omens fan (with a Whovian otaku as a partner) writes a fanfic? This, apparently.
> 
> This is my first posted fanfiction in almost a decade. ^.^;

The thing, as Crowley had unconsciously taken to calling it, had been sitting in his flat when he'd returned from temptations that week. The Arrangement had not worked in his favor this time, what with Hell sending Crowley halfway around the world to stir up a little trouble in the American Midwest. According to Aziraphale, there was no Heavenly work to be done there, so the demon had grumbled--because the midwestern United States was boringly predictable with its corn and cows--and left to tempt a preacher. He'd also found a pair of pliers and cut a few fences because cows were significantly less boring when they were being chased through miraculously-pristine cornfields by panicked farmers.

He'd returned on Tuesday, fully expecting to get a nap in. Then he'd caught sight of...whatever it was sitting in his study. It was now midday on Thursday and he had been sitting staring at the bloody thing across the room from him for two days now.

In appearance it looked like a statue of an angel, like one might find over some mildly wealthy person's tombstone. Made of gray weathered stone, it stood upright and had its face bent slightly into its hands. Crowley could relate, since he felt like doing the same thing in exasperation everytime he had to bail Aziraphale out of whatever ridiculous situation the Principality had gotten himself into at the time. However, given the somewhat morbid nature of the statue, he suspected it was meant to be weeping.

He referred to it as a statue, yet he had the most horrible feeling that what he was looking at was merely a camouflage of some sort. Whatever it was, it was _alive_ in some way. He swore that on Wednesday when he had briefly taken his eyes off it for a moment, it had actually crept forward towards him a inch or so. That had been so alarming that he had moved his throne up against the opposite wall to where he could sit and stare at the statue properly without craning his neck in its direction.

What was also alarming was that he could not miracle it away. He had tried to do so several times now and whatever the statue actually was refused to budge to his whims. At first, he'd thought maybe it was something Upstairs had cooked up; they were terribly unsubtle and a wannabe-Trojan horse in the shape of an angel was right up their alley. But even objects created by Heaven could be sent elsewhere with a snap of his fingers and Crowley was fairly certain after having the stone angel in his flat for a few minutes that it was neither of Heaven or of Hell. Which sent his second suspicion flying out the window, that one of his fellow demons had somehow snuck this... _menace_ into his heavily-warded domicile.

He had examined it, circling it like a vulture and tasting the air around it with a serpent's forked tongue. For all intents and purposes, it was made of stone--granite, if his tastebuds were anything to go by. Although he couldn't bring himself to physically touch the wretched statue, he had confirmation that it at least sounded like it was made of stone. He had thrown a couple of items at it, first out of curiosity to see if it would react and then sheer boredom. The remains of an old fountain pen lay on the floor, its ink splattered across the hands of the stone angel. A paperweight lay in twain near the statue's grey feet. When Crowley had grown bored of merely waiting for it to do something , he had materialized a hand-sized rubber ball out of the firmament and proceeded to use the statue as a rebound.

Never once had he blinked. Something in the back of his mind warned him not to take his eyes off it for a moment, not even to close his eyelids for a millisecond. Because for all the world that the unwelcome visitor looked, sounded, and tasted like a statue carved out of stone, Crowley had the horrible feeling that what he was looking at was but a mere facade of a predator at least as ancient as himself. And not of the firmament on which She had created the world.

"I can do this all day, you know," he said breezily as he threw his rubber ball against the statue yet again. It said nothing for the second day in a row, burying what he assumed was a Greco-Roman face into its stone hands.

Honestly, what was Crowley supposed to do with it? He was hesitant to try destroying the statue for worry of what it might do in retaliation. This was _his_ flat, dammit! All of his memorabilia were here, trophies of his exploits with Aziraphale, as well as his astronomy books and plants he had been raising for centuries. Miracling them back into existence if they were to somehow be destroyed would make him feel even more hollow on the inside because they just wouldn't be the same.

Suddenly, the phone on his study desk began to ring and he very nearly tore his eyes off the statue to glance at it. Keeping his eyes on his uninvited guest, he got up and sauntered over to his desk. He sat down on its polished surface, lifting the receiver to his ear.

"Hullo?" he said into the phone, glaring at the stone angel near him for squatting in his flat.

"Crowley," said Aziraphale from the other end, "you're back! I was wondering if we might meet up?"

 _Heaven must have sent him a new assignment_ , Crowley surmised. Aziraphale rarely called for them to meet up for anything other than the Arrangement; they had bumped into each other accidentally far more often than not when they weren't deliberately seeing each other for the sake of their deal. It stung that the Principality seemed to consider him a necessary evil rather than a friend. Or more.

"'M a bit busssy at the moment, angel," said Crowley, rolling the rubber ball on the desk with the heel of his palm. The statue was close enough for him to give it a solid kick.

"Is there something the matter, my dear? You sound somewhat distressed," came Aziraphale's worried voice over the phone. The demon mentally cursed that the angel was able to read him so well from just the sound of his voice. Then he paused, wondering if perhaps the book-loving angel had ever come across something like the statue in his readings.

"Actually," he drawled, rounding out the vowels in his feigned nonchalance, "I have a bit of an unwelcome guest in my flat. Came back from the States a couple days ago and there was this ruddy statue sitting in my study like it owned the bloody place."

"Did you say a statue?" said Aziraphale, sounding alarmed to Crowley's odd relief. Maybe he _had_ heard of something?

"Yeah, the size of a person. Looks like an--"

"--angel..." Aziraphale breathed, finishing the sentence for him. "Crowley, stay where you are and whatever you do, keep looking at it. _Don't blink._ I'll be right over."

"Wait, _what_?" Crowley yelped, but the phone line had already gone dead. He made the mistake of staring down at the receiver in his hand in a moment of blind panic, only to feel... _something_ shift in the room. Remembering the statue, he glanced back up and promptly toppled backwards onto the floor in genuine fright when he saw that not only had the stone angel moved forward enough to almost brush his knees, but that parts of its body were in different positions than before. The hands were lower and the head was lifted up more. He could see its blank emotionless eyes peeping over the top of its fingers.

"Pissss off already, why don't ya!" he groused, summoning his rubber ball and consequently beaning the statue between its creepy eyes in retaliation for the scare. He felt ridiculous and embarrassed for having startled like a hatchling, but at least Aziraphale hadn't been around to see it.

Suddenly, he heard what sounded like a knock and a hiss of pain, followed by a muffled curse from beyond the front door of his flat. "Crowley? Are you in there? Let me in, please!" came Aziraphale's voice. Speak of the devil--er, angel. Must have miracled himself over.

Crowley felt a bit like a deer staring into a rapidly approaching set of headlights. Because for all the times he had visited Aziraphale in his cozy little bookshop in Soho, never once had the angel set foot in his flat. He was an intensely private person when it came to his sanctum sanctorum and found himself inwardly fretting about what the Principality would think of his home. No, he wasn't ready to show Aziraphale this intimate part of himself; it was bad enough that the angel was going to be seeing his study, apparently.

He got up and sat back down on his throne, never once taking his eyes off his unwanted intruder. With a snap of his fingers, doors in his flat slammed closed while open doorways sealed over with illusions. Another snap took down enough of his wards to allow a Heavenly presence like Aziraphale into his flat. A third unlocked his front door.

"Come in, angel!" he called, glaring at the stone intruder with enough murderous intent that it probably would have turned to stone if it weren't already made of it. He summoned his rubber ball yet again and continued his game of bouncing it off the statue. He heard the door to his flat open, followed by the frantic tailor-made footsteps of the Principality.

"There you are, my dear--" began Aziraphale, stopping short in the doorway to the study. "What on earth are you doing?!" He looked aghast.

Crowley cocked an eyebrow and said, "What's it look like? Might as well entertain myself while this tosser sssits in my study." He sniffed disdainfully, slouching on his throne and glowering like a sullen reptile. Secretly he was more than a little relieved that the angel had arrived.

"Crowley, this is one of the most dangerous creatures in the universe!" Aziraphale exclaimed, stepping into the study. His sea-blue eyes darted over the state of the room, taking in the broken items on the floor and the phone dangling off the desk by its cord where Crowley had dropped it. "What else did you throw at it?"

"Oh, just some insults..." Crowley drawled lazily, ignoring the exasperated look he received from Aziraphale. "What is it, anyway? And how do you know about it?"

"Right!" said the angel, his expression brightening in remembrance. "I came across one of these myself a while back. It appeared in the bookshop one day out of nowhere. A clever fellow who helped me get rid of it called it a 'weeping angel'."

There was a beat of silence.

"Not a very inventive name, is it?" Crowley remarked, his serpentine eyes avoiding the weeping angel's blank ones. He saw Aziraphale roll his own in the periphery of his vision. "What did you do with it, this weeping angel of yoursss?"

"Oh, it's still in the bookshop," said Aziraphale dismissively, making Crowley sit up in alarm. "Don't worry, it's trapped in a storeroom with the wall sealed over the entrance."

"You trapped it," deadpanned the angel's demonic counterpart. "I thought you sssaid these things were really dangerous?"

"Yes, well, the Doctor said that they prey on innocent people by sneaking up on them and touching them when they aren't looking. They can move even when you blink. Apparently they transport people through time and space to the past and, well, _feed_ on the temporal energy created by these people while they live out the rest of their lives in a different timeline. Imagine the neverending feast for a weeping angel if it sent one of us back in time."

Crowley nodded absently. Right, because he and Aziraphale were essentially immortal as long as they avoided holy water and hellfire, respectively.

If Aziraphale had said this to Crowley a week before, the demon would have laughed and accused the Principality of being off his rocker. But Crowley had seen--or not seen, he supposed--how the weeping angel moved. His specialty was protective magics from nearly every culture on the globe, so he wasn't an expert on whatever physics the statue was manipulating to its will. But it had definitely done something to shape the fabric of space, so who was he to say it couldn't also do those other things Aziraphale mentioned?

He frowned. "Who wasss this doctor? Doctor who?" he asked, the title--or was it a name?--niggling in the back of his mind as if it were somehow familiar. "And why haven't we heard about these weeping angels before now?"

Crowley had always been fond of asking questions; that was the reason he had gravitated toward Lucifer and his lot before the War. Aziraphale, the sneaky bugger, had found a loophole by not outright questioning anyone, instead searching through his menagerie of first edition books for whatever information he was looking for. It made Crowley a bit miffed to be honest, because Heaven had not had a library of any kind--being against knowledge and all--back before he Fell. Maybe it still didn't.

Aziraphale shuffled his feet, a peculiar mixture of discomfort and excitement evident on his face. He wringed his hands together as if in distress. "It's because they're from, you know..." he said hesitantly, pointing a trembling finger skyward. It took a moment for Crowley to parse his meaning. The weeping angels were not Heavenly, which left...

"Aliens?" said Crowley, letting a hint of disbelief tinge his voice. "They're aliensss? From another planet?" Inside he was a bit thrilled, if he were being honest with himself. There were days when he wanted to leave Earth and explore the cosmos he had helped create back when he had been an angel. To discover if She had created other forms of life aside from that flourishing on this lonely blue planet in the arm of a spiraling galaxy.

Aziraphale nodded and replied, "Speaking of which, I've taken the liberty of redirecting that nice fellow to help us with our little problem."

" _What._ You invited someone elssse to _my_ flat?!" Crowley exclaimed, his shock and outrage making him forget he was supposed to be watching the weeping angel. He jumped to his feet, his knuckles white around the rubber ball in his right hand.

"I'm sorry, my dear, truly I am. But he's the best person to help with our problem," said the angel morosely, shuffling nervously behind the statue. Whether it was to keep it within his sight or to use it as a shield from Crowley's wrath, the demon didn't know. As if Crowley would deliberately harm his angel, though it was tempting at the moment to bounce the ball off of Aziraphale's curly head.

Before Crowley could say something undoubtedly snarky back, there was a strange whooshing sound. Before his very eyes, what looked like an old blue police box pulsed out of thin air and materialized in his very-much-not-private-anymore study. Stranger still was that a man soon popped out of inside it, looking decidedly perplexed at his surroundings.

"Hullo, this isn't eighth-century Norway. Too warm and humid," said the man, looking disappointed but curious. Crowley felt nearly faint with shock at the sight of the newcomer because that was _his_ face, albeit a bit younger. That was _his_ voice, sounding less jaded. Rarely did he find himself at a loss for words, but what could he really say when faced with a younger, brunette version of himself?

"I'm terribly sorry, Doctor, for calling your Tardis here," piped up Aziraphale from behind the weeping angel. "But we needed your help, as you can see."

Crowley's double spotted the Principality and brightened considerably. "Aziraphale! Good to see you again! How's my favorite angel?" asked the man--the Doctor--fondly. He smiled cheekily in the angel's direction, looking downright flirtatious. To Crowley's horror, Aziraphale actually turned slightly pink and preened at the man's greeting.

"I'm quite well. Just doing my usual thing of, you know, giving blessings and thwarting the machinations of the Enemy when I'm not with my books," said the Principality, looking pleased as punch to even be in this newcomer's presence. A strangled croak of disbelief and horror made its way past Crowley's lips without his permission, attracting the attention of the other two.

"Oh," said the Doctor, his warm brown eyes widening as he spotted what Crowley had. There was a stretch of silence where they simply stared at each other, the Doctor in what appeared to be growing wonder and Crowley in increasing levels of confused discomfort.

"Crowley," said Aziraphale in a gentle tone, perhaps sensing the demon's bewilderment, "this is the Doctor. Doctor, this is my... _acquaintance_ , Anthony J. Crowley. The one I mentioned looked an awful lot like you the last time we spoke?"

Crowley bristled slightly at the use of the word 'acquaintance'. He would have liked to think that he and Aziraphale were friends, but the angel had made it perfectly clear from the Holy Water Debacle (as the demon privately referred to it) that he wasn't interested in being even that. And where did Aziraphale get off telling him that he 'moved too fast' when he was practically _flirting_ (inasmuch as the angel knew how to flirt) with Crowley's body double?

Envy and his old insecurities surged up inside him like a fire coming back to life after being starved of oxygen. He swallowed the lump that had formed in the back of his throat, glad that he was wearing his shades to prevent the other two from seeing him blink the stinging sensation away.

"But this is brilliant!" cried the Doctor excitedly, practically stampeding towards Crowley as he closed the distance between them. "I haven't bumped into you in a while, not since regenerating!" Crowley, on his part, put as much of that distance back between himself and his advancing clone as he could before his back met one of the bookshelves in the study.

"I have never met you before in my life, you nutter!" he hissed, already feeling utterly fed-up with the situation and wishing to be left alone.

Then there were warm hands on both sides of his face cupping his jawline and his sentence died in his throat. It had been years since anyone had actually touched him deliberately, having to make do with accidental skin contact mostly from Aziraphale. Now this stranger was mapping Crowley's face almost hungrily with the tips of his fingers and the palms of his hands as if he were a blind man trying to puzzle out another person's likeness. Except that this person--this Doctor--was very much capable of seeing, if the way he was intensely scrutinizing Crowley with bright brown eyes was any indication.

A sound eked its way out of his throat, the only part of him that wasn't completely paralyzed by the shock of the stranger's attention. "Ngk..." he all but whimpered.

And it wasn't just the shock of feeling skin touching his own for the first time in so long that temporarily rendered him incapacitated, but the fact that somehow he recognized this man. Not because of what he looked like, but because of his sheer presence and aura, and the utter ancient familiarity behind those cheerful but sad eyes. If he listened closely, he could hear two hearts beating in tandem in the same chest. Yes, he had met a similar man--no, the _same_ man, somehow--centuries before.

"I-Impossible..." Crowley croaked finally, his shades slipping down to the end of his nose in his astonishment. "That was back during the beginning of the Dark Ages! And the man I met then didn't look like you."

He remembered the stranger clearly. Short of stature with a pleasant, almost hobbit-like face, the man he had met then had been about to be run through unpleasantly with half a dozen swords. Crowley, no longer wearing the guise of a Roman citizen but rather that of a Pictish warrior, had happened upon a group of Visigoth bandits threatening to do harm to the strange little man. After giving them a sound thrashing with Gaulish steel, he had sent their captive on his way. Or tried to, considering that the man he had saved had been a bit too interested in him for his initial comfort.

_"I rather like the look about you, young man," said the oddly-dressed ex-captive, wrinkles crinkling around his smiling blue eyes. "Very worldly. And such red hair! Are you from north of Hadrian's Wall, by any chance?"_

_"If I say yes, will you leave me alone?" Crowley--or as the humans in Eire and Alba called him, 'Cruadhlaoich'--groused, scowling down at the shorter man and wondering if saving him had been a good idea. He was supposed to be in Londonium tempting the remaining Roman soldiers into idleness, not saving strange little men wielding parasols from being carved up for coin._

_"I've never seen anyone with eyes quite like yours, either," continued the other. He was doggedly keeping pace with Crowley down the road away from the unconscious bodies of the Visigoths like a lost puppy, and pulling the look of one off rather well. Crowley determinedly didn't look in the stranger's direction, feeling self-conscious about his eyes. "Very vibrant and golden."_

_"That's because I'm a demon, human," said Crowley matter-of-factly, hoping that telling the truth would put the stranger off. "You ssshould leave before I gobble you up like I do misbehaving children." Or half-truths. He didn't eat people, unlike some of his fellow demons._

_"Well, you may be a demon, but I certainly doubt you mean to eat me," chuckled the little man, spinning his umbrella in one hand. "Otherwise you wouldn't have bothered assisting me with those unruly gentlemen back there. Besides, I feel fairly confident telling my savior that I'm hardly human myself."_

_That made Crowley stop dead in his tracks. Immediately he stretched out his senses to examine the stranger, certain he would find an aura of blinding light behind what appeared to be an earthly body. But instead of an angel in disguise, he found a mortal. An incredibly old mortal with a convoluted,_ _multicolored aura and centuries' worth of experience behind his amicable gaze. And two hearts, once Crowley allowed himself to tune into his superior hearing abilities._

_"By the way," said the non-human, "I'm the Doctor. And you are?"_

_"...Crowley," said the demon, surprising himself. He had meant to use the alias 'Ashtoreth', as the humans knew him a millennia ago and still called him when they summoned him into their circles for favors. They were always hilariously taken-aback whenever he chose to appear to them as he was now instead of a nubile young fertility goddess._

_"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Crowley. I was wondering if I might accompany you to the next village? My companion Ace is waiting there for me with our transport," chirped the Doctor, his pleasant face crinkling into an irresistible smile._

_Crowley blinked in a slow reptilian way, dumbfounded at how trusting this not-human was. He reminded him of a child, in some ways. In other ways, he reminded Crowley of Aziraphale._

_It was this last resemblance that made him shrug and say, "...Yeah, all right. Come along, then."_

The Doctor, looking very much not like the man Crowley had made acquaintance with long ago on the roads leading from falling Rome, merely hummed in what could have been agreement. He was practically bubbling over with excitement.

"I've changed several times since then," he said, "but imagine how intrigued I was when I regenerated and looked like an intriguing chap I had bumped into here on Earth years ago! I was quite disappointed when my hair didn't turn out ginger like yours." Without warning, he reached out and plucked Crowley's shades from his face.

"Oi!" yelped the demon, flinching backwards. "You can't just--!" Was this how Kâva had felt in the Garden after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, this terrible feeling of nakedness? Crowley had always removed his shades on his own terms; never before had someone simply taken them from him.

"There we are! Much better!" said the Doctor, looking pleased. "You know, I've traveled around the cosmos several timelines over since I last saw you and still haven't seen eyes like yours? You should show them off more often!"

"They really are quite lovely," piped up Aziraphale from his position behind the weeping angel. Crowley's eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline, his stomach doing funny little somersaults at the compliment. His face felt hot, like it was burning in hellfire all over again. To his horror, he realized he was blushing. He averted his gaze, knowing how expressive his eyes were without his shades.

"Well, that's a funny reaction," said the Doctor, sounding both amused and concerned at the same time. He turned to look at the Principality behind him. "Do you not compliment the poor fellow very often, Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale twiddled his hands in front of him and said, albeit a bit uncertainly, "Well, he _is_ a demon..." Crowley's face tightened at the age-old argument but he said nothing. The angel clung to the assumption that Crowley must have done something unforgiveable to deserve being cast into the Pit; trying to persuade him otherwise had always ended in failure and so the demon had simply stopped trying after a while.

"Really?" said the Doctor, his lips pouting slightly as his brow furrowed in thought. "I only ever saw him help people whenever I happened across him before now. I once saw him convincing Egyptians to put lamb's blood over their doors before...you know..." A look of discomfort came over that unsettlingly familiar face and he made a vague waving motion with one of his hands.

"Crowley, you _didn't_ ," said Aziraphale, but he didn't look or sound angry. Instead, his cherubic face was amused and, if Crowley had seen the look directed at anyone else, he would have called it _affectionate._ But the angel was simply mercurial in regards to whatever relationship they had, vacillating between genuinely enjoying Crowley's company to wanting nothing to do with him because they were 'hereditary enemies'.

"They were just poor rural farmers," muttered Crowley, suddenly fascinated with the nonexistent dirt on his shoes. "Not their fault that their ruler was an insufferable arsehole." A thought suddenly occurred to him and he scowled suspiciously in the Doctor's direction.

"I don't recall seeing you there, blabbermouth," he snarked. It was eerie seeing his own face reflected back at him, looking entirely more pleased than Crowley could ever recall himself showing.

"I was wearing a scarf," replied the doctor cheekily, winking and handing Crowley back his shades. Suddenly Crowley wasn't so sure that this was his second encounter with the other man. How many other times had the apparent... _time-traveler_ (was he reading this correctly?!) bumped into him wearing a different face, with Crowley none the wiser? The idea was disconcerting, to say the least.

"While this does sound like an interesting topic for later, I'm afraid we have a more pressing issue at hand," said Aziraphale, gesturing a bit helplessly at the weeping angel in front of him. "Crowley said it was here in the flat when he returned a couple of days ago."

"Right," said the Doctor, suddenly looking somber and professional. Older, even. His hand flew into his brown trenchcoat and he withdrew a long thin device made of metal. Stepping within a couple feet of the weeping angel, he pointed the object at it as if scanning Crowley's unwelcome flatmate. An unfamiliar buzzing-warbling sound emanated from the device, making the hair on Crowley's forearms rise up in agitation.

"Well, this is your standard weeping angel," the Doctor concluded after a moment. "A bit more inkstained than usual, though." He toed the remains of the fountain pen with the end of one of his shoes, sending Crowley an amused look.

The demon huffed and hunched his shoulders defensively, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his close-fitting pants.

"I was trying to provoke it into attacking," said Crowley a bit petulantly, scowling at no one in particular.

"Given that you were looking at it, that would've been impossible. They become quantum-locked whenever they are being directly observed," explained the Doctor, frowning down at the broken paperweight on the floor. "You really stared at it for two days without blinking?"

"Don't need to. Blink, I mean," said Crowley in reply. "Look, is there a way to get rid of it without bricking it into the damn wall of my flat? I don't much fancy the idea of thisss thing being anywhere near me while I nap." He needed his naps. Not because it was a physical necessity like it was for humans, but because of the mental toll of simply existing on a planet amongst creatures that were constantly thinking up creative new ways of harming and killing each other. He felt like an indulgent older brother to a pack of sociopathic siblings some days. There were whole decades he had slept away after weeks of getting wasted because of the anguish he felt in his very psyche and the regret of ever having tempted anyone.

The Doctor hesitated, looking like he was about to ask something but then thought better of it. "You could break it apart with a blunt object and transport the remains elsewhere, I suppose," he suggested. "The problem is that the pieces reform into the weeping angel after a period of time. The best solution is to starve it by making it stare at another of its kind or to make it look at its reflection, like we did with the one in Aziraphale's bookshop."

"And if I were to bust it up and then put it in, I dunno, a large box several miles underground with a reflective interior?" offered Crowley in an innocent, relaxed tone. He didn't know if weeping angels could see in the dark like demons could, but this one was in for a rude awakening if that was the case. Served it right for daring to set foot into his flat like a total git.

The Doctor blinked before a look of affectionate amusement settled on his face. "Couldn't hurt," he said. "Just make sure you get all the pieces, yeah?" Crowley responded by snapping his fingers and miracling up an aluminum bat, advancing on the weeping angel while sporting a feral grin.

"Oh, dear. I haven't seen him this eager to destroy something in quite some time," said Aziraphale, wisely removing himself from Crowley's path and resituating himself beside the Doctor.

"We should probably leave him to it," suggested the time-traveler, wincing as Crowley swung the bat and knocked the weeping angel's head clean off. "Fancy a short trip in the Tardis? I could drop you off in Soho."

Aziraphale immediately brightened, looking as excited as a child on Christmas morning. "Oh yes, please!" he said with unconcealed delight. "I've wanted a look inside for so long!" Like Crowley, Aziraphale had also been randomly encountering the time-traveling alien known across the universe as the Doctor for many years. He was just significantly less oblivious to this fact than the demon.

The Doctor obliged him by opening the door to the Tardis. "After you, my angelic friend," he said, sweeping his hand in a low arc towards the darkened interior of his trusty spaceship.

Aziraphale immediately stepped in, practically vibrating in his anticipation. "Oh, my," the Doctor heard him say. "Oh, _my_. It's... It's lovely! I absolutely adore the ambience in here!" The Time Lord stifled a laugh; it was terribly like the angel to not react to the larger interior like all the other companions he had travelled with over the years. Behind him, Crowley had already broken the weeping angel into several pieces, swearing and carrying on as he smashed them into smaller fragments with a cacophony of metallic _pings_.

"I'll teach you to come sssneaking into my flat, you bloody cu--!" The Doctor wisely chose that moment to step into the Tardis and close the door, cutting off the remainder of the angry demon's tirade. He was pleased to watch Aziraphale flutter about to his heart's content around the Tardis' flight deck, praising the time machine and her wonderful capabilities. It had been a secret desire of his to have both the angel and the demon he had become acquainted with to travel with him at least once, to help sate Aziraphale's childlike wonder at the universe and to offer Crowley an escape from human atrocities for a little while. They deserved a vacation, he thought, preferably full of wholesome adventure that didn't involve running for their lives from Daleks and Cybermen.

"So, do you want me to drop you off at your bookshop?" the Doctor asked, ambling casually towards the Tardis's control panel with his hands in his pockets. "Or is there anywhere in particular you'd like to visit beforehand?"

"Oh, can we?" cried Aziraphale, and then his face fell. "But...I have a blessing to do in Cairo. I got the orders from Heaven not too long ago and checked in with Crowley to see if he was also heading that way..."

His blue-gray eyes flicked toward the entrance of the Tardis, unconcealed concern shining in them. "Do you suppose he'll be all right? We left him alone with that creature."

The Doctor scrunched up his face and said, "He'll be fine. Once he started destroying the weeping angel, he made it harmless for the time being. Undoubtedly he'll do what he suggested and pop off for a nap once he's done." Aziraphale chuckled.

"Do you know that he used to sleep right out in the open back during the first millenia? Village children would braid his hair and weave flowers into it, and he'd just doze right through it all. He stopped doing that after..." said Aziraphale, his voice catching a little at the memory. "After Utnapishtim built his ark and the Middle East flooded." It pained him to remember how devastated Crowley had been at the deaths of those children. It had changed the demon permanently, making his sharp edges razor-thin as obsidian. Quicker to disparage Her Plan, quicker to hold everyone at arm's length. Everyone except him, until at last Aziraphale had had to push him away for both their sakes.

The Doctor was silent. There was nothing he could say that would bring comfort to the angel, having witnessed countless atrocities himself across space and time. But perhaps...

"I once found him asleep in a sacred tree at the Asklepeion in Argolis," he murmured above the white noise of the Tardis. "As a snake. The local healers thought he was Asklepios in mortal form, blessing them with his presence." That startled a suspiciously wet-sounding laugh out of Aziraphale.

"That sounds incredibly like him, the cheeky bugger. He's always been fond of masquerading as a deity to fool humans," said the angel affectionately. He cleared his throat, blinking his stinging eyes rapidly.

"Well, if you would please drop me off at my bookstore, Doctor, I would be much obliged. I have a couple of things that need doing before I go to Egypt," continued Aziraphale with a sense of finality.

Nodding, the Doctor began flipping the required switches and pressing the right buttons to send the Tardis on her way. At least, he hoped he was; he had no idea what some of said buttons and switches actually did. Since he was merely moving through space without the extra dimension of time, finding a place for the old girl to land was much less finicky than usual.

"I should think Crowley and I would be free next week," said Aziraphale a bit shyly after a moment of silence. "He'll probably be asleep for a few days, anyway, and I think I'll be back to my shop by then. Maybe...you could stop by again?"

Hope spluttered to life in the Doctor's chest. "I could do that," he replied, fiercely warning his brain to not go getting distracted by some random curiosity. "Do you perhaps know of a place Crowley would like to visit? You know, in case we need to, ah, tempt him into joining us?"

Aziraphale grinned and immediately said, "Alpha Centauri. He said he forged it, back in the beginning."

The Tardis landed, phasing into existence near the _A.Z. Fell & Co_. bookshop in Soho. Escorting his Heavenly guest out of the flight deck and back out onto Earth, the Doctor waved Aziraphale goodbye before returning his vessel to the temporal void.

"Alpha Centauri..." he muttered to himself, a small smile on his lips. "Haven't been there in a while. Should be interesting."

**Author's Note:**

> What, no, I was not subtly shipping Ten with Crowley and Aziraphale. Whatever gave you that idea? It's not like the Doctor goes around falling in love left and right as he gallivants about the galaxy or anything...
> 
> So, if you aren't already aware, a significant chunk of the Old Testament (from the beginning to around the time of Abraham) is actually of ancient Sumerian origin. The first man and woman to be created for kingship on Earth were called Adappa and Kâva. Noah was known as Utnapishtim.


End file.
